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Failure to change culture explained!
by Richard Register
The movement of the 1960s was a juxtaposition of
dropping out, taking it easy in a low consumption lifestyle, and fanatical
work for the movement: organizing demonstrations, producing underground
newspapers, draft counseling and so on. One simultaneously cooled out and
worked like a dog. New horizons opened up with injustice and ecological
poisoning rubbed in everyoneís nose. Psychedelics, eastern philosophy
and mysticism entered the culture. As dropping out of the global economy
and boycotting the multinationals today could be a profound strategy, so
it seemed in the ë60s, and it helped stopped the bombers as well as the
"odious" "gears and levers" of the industrial machine
that Mario Savio urged us to place our bodies against.
But something was missing: creativity, requiring work
and a sense of order and other forms of discipline that seemed anathema to
the movement. Yet nothing gets built without the rigorous methods of going
from vision to application of that vision. Without consistent work of the
sort to build a different reality, especially in regard to our largest
physical products and the largest patterns of consumption of resources,
the good vibes and right insights of the era were destined to produce
little. We were NOT facing up to the basic issue of the necessity to
understand the creative process enough to re-create the cities, towns,
villages, transportation systems and everything else connectedóthe
biggest and most energy consuming intimately interlinked creations of
humanity. Nor were we scientifically plumbing the basic principles of
structuring the built habitat and related systems. Society built sprawled
development, and with it a gargantuan dependence on cars, oil, vast
acreage of raw land, millions of tons of asphalt, trillions of dollars,
billions of wasted hours and half a million lives expunged globally every
year in car wrecks. Itís an amazing story because we are STILL not
confronting what it means to rebuild and reshape our society. We need a
healthy relationship with living nature and an essentially
conservationist/restorationist relationship with resources.
Now as in the ë60s it is not enough to just drop out
and become lower-consumption people among the growing millions of others
who couldnít care less. We can dream on that our good intentions will
let us sail on through, but unconsciously as in the 1960s; the next drop
out phase will also fail to build a better society. We still need to add
to humane insights the inspiration phase of creativityólargely
spontaneous and intuitiveóthe methods of clear systematic thinking, and
sustained, organized, disciplined efforts. Itís difficult, but to solve
the problems on the scale they have become, how could it have ever been
imagined to be easy?
Richard Register, "Depaving King," is
President of Ecocity Builders, Berkeley: http://www.citizen-planners.org/ecocitybuilders
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